


Red for Passion, Blue for Faith

by Zizzani



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, BACKGROUND BEITH, BEITH - Freeform, BEITH FOREVER, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Tooth Rotting Fluff, YOU CAN'T STOP ME SUFFERPIT, background shallura - Freeform, i mean like EVERYONE is getting cavities, possible hanahaki, reference to the bee movie, we'll see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zizzani/pseuds/Zizzani
Summary: The force of the impact had sent whatever coins had been in the vendor’s hand to go spinning over the surface of the desk top, a few of them spilling over the sides to ping loudly over the floor. Keith eyes followed the brown column of the customer’s arm all the way up to their shoulder before finally settling on their face.“I need a bouquet of flowers that says FUCK YOU!”





	1. Purple for Love at First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from Discord that evolved into potential hanahaki and subtle #Beith
> 
> i'm also trying a new style of writing so ya that's cool too

Keith yawned widely as he lay back in his chair, feet swung carelessly up on the desk, his back stretching out like a cat. A slight twist of his torso and a few satisfying clicks made their way up the jigsaw of his spine. He twisted his head first to the right, then to the left, trying to squeeze the last of the tension out of his muscles. An audible crack came from somewhere below Keith’s ear, loud enough for him to feel it reverberate through his teeth. Keith groaned as the little nugget of tightness that had been lingering there dissipated, leaving a dull ache in the wake of its absence. Keith gave his head one last roll for good measure before slumping back down.

“What have I told you about putting your feet on the desk?”

Shiro’s stern voice boomed through the shop front as he came striding out of the back room, accompanied by the gentle chime of the bead curtain he sweeps aside. Keith despised that damn curtain, but Shiro wouldn’t let him take it down. He insisted that it makes the shop appear more “open”. Keith maintained that the “open” sign on the door did that job well enough.

“There’s no one here, Shiro,” Keith protested.

It was true. The shop had been particularly quiet this afternoon, not that Keith really minded. Usually it was either dead for business or swamped with orders, and the latter acted as a beacon for difficult walk-ins. Chaos invited chaos after all, though Keith would rather sit with his feet swung up on the desk reading a trashy magazine than argue with a customer about why they shouldn’t pair certain flowers together around an armful of orchids and tangled taffeta.

The shop had been a family business before Shiro’s parents had passed away. Keith had been adopted by the Shirogane family when he was 5: Old enough to remember that the family had not always been his, young enough to forget the empty blur of what came before them. He did remember that a 12-year-old Shiro had poked him in the cheek with the tip of one bony finger, and Keith had retaliated by almost biting it off before the Shiroganes had even shut the car door. Keith remembered twisting around in his seat to watch the orphanage disappear in the distance, a dark smudge staining the horizon. Shiro’s smile had caught Keith’s attention out the corner of his eye. Keith remembered turning to look at it once, and never turning back.

They’d been as thick as thieves from that moment forward. An unlikely balance in the form of twin spots of ink – dark messy hair and smiles bred for mischief. Keith had a habit of attracting trouble, be it with a hard look, a bitten out word, or a well-aimed kick to the shin. Shiro was always there to counter that harshness, armed with a soft smile, a soothing apology, and a particular affinity for diffusing tension. Their duality had won them as much favour as it had distaste, and Shiro and Keith’s parents had made no small effort to file the boys’ rough edges down enough in preparation for when they touched other people’s lives, as inevitable as a hurricane.

Their parents had been as much of a team as their sons; a push to accompany a pull, a whisper to follow a shout, and as colourful as the flowers they sold.

Their mother had all the charms of a quiet forest: Tall and strong when winds battered her, quiet and contemplative when left to her own devices. When the imminent questions of Keith’s biological parentage had been shouted at her like whips, she’d met them with calmness and understanding.

If their mother was a forest, their father was the mountain sat beside her: Weathered rock that stood upon humble foundations, shaped with time and patience.

Keith felt that Shiro reflected each side of them, a perfect 50/50 splice of their best features for which there was nothing left for him. Simply an echo of what they’d tried to mould him into. He’d once aired these grievances to his father, who’d listened to them silent and as stoic as the rock Keith likened him to. He’d responded by saying that God had brought Keith to them, and that should Keith represent them or not, his being in the family was part of a grander design. One that was not for them to question.

Keith didn’t think he believed in God, but he did believe he’d seen the Devil once.

It had been a cold day. The kind of cold that seeps through the pores of your skin down to the marrow of your bones, the kind that you could feel permeate the roof of your mouth like a damp sponge. Keith had been looking out of the window as far as he’d been allowed, what with the thick mist surrounding them swallowing the car like a blanket. It had been a long drive to the hospital and a long drive back, but he’d made the trip with his parents because Shiro had been in trouble and their family was tied together with magnets: When one pushed, the other pulled. And so they’d driven the hours to visit the special care unit, despite the promise that Shiro would not be awake when they arrived, nor would he be awake when they left. Keith remembered that he’d been thinking about Shiro’s arm and how where it had once stopped at the tips of his fingers, always ready to extend in help, it now stopped at his bicep. Keith wondered if this meant Shiro’s generosity now stopped at his bicep, but in the speculative sort of way of wondering where you already know the answer. Keith remembered hearing his father swear loudly, a well-chosen word at a well-chosen time, and the unsteady lurch of the car that comes after one slams on the brakes in a hurry. He remembered how he’d twisted his head with the moment and that was when he’d seen The Devil.

He didn’t look like his caricature, forked tail and fiery breath. He did have hooves though, and he stood possibly 8 feet tall, horns splayed like open hands. Keith had met his eyes, milky and white, the speed of the car smearing his outline into a smoky shape barely reminiscent of a man. Which was when the squealing of the car’s tyres reached Keith’s ears, a whole two seconds before he’d felt the same weightlessness associated with flying through the air. When the front of the car had hit the water, Keith couldn’t remember feeling panicked. He could remember his parents’ panic though, loud and high-pitched. It had made him feel claustrophobic, or perhaps that had been the icy water rising around his ankles.

It may have been the Devil that drove the car off the road, but it had been deep primal instinct that drove Keith out of the sinking vehicle. And as soon as he’d broken the surface of the water, he’d been alone. It was as if those murky depths had erased his parents from existence. And that had been that, it had been Keith and Shiro together from then on.

“Well since it’s so quiet, you won’t mind making up some of those hand-tie orders,” Shiro called from across the shop.

His deep voice snapped Keith back to the present, an involuntary shiver following closely at his heels as the iciness of the memory chased his consciousness. Keith shot his brother a scowl, only to be rewarded with a smile, a natural balance commanded by nature. He kicked his feet off the desk, lurching to a stand with a symphony of clicks as his joints argued with him. Keith grabbed the order list, mentally checking off the flowers they had in stock. There were a few orders for particular flowers peppering the usual kind they took that specified colour and budget only. Keith mused that these orders were either made by people with a history of floristry, or people who wanted to appear to have a history of floristry, not that one was markedly much better than the other. He swept around the shop with a bucket, grabbing the flowers the small sheet of paper demanded, before setting them out on the worktop and bundling them obediently. It was after these orders were filled that Keith’s brain did a little imaginary stretch, flexing for inevitable use. Keith’s eyes rolled over the rest of the orders with as much interest as one affords daytime TV.

**$20, PURPLE AND WHITE.**

_Yes, Mrs Canneaux,_ Keith thought as he drifted towards the Monkshood and orchids.

He tucked the purple flowers together neatly and framed them in Baby’s Breath, ignoring the ache in his hand from gripping the stems. He lashed them together with straw taffeta, ignoring when one of the petals reached up to swat him in the eye for tugging too tight.

**$50, RED – SPECIAL ORDER: CRYSTAL EMBELLISHMENT.**

Keith snorted at the order. “Crystal embellishment” referred to the tasteless heart shaped diamantes that they stuck to the centre of red roses every year on Valentine’s Day. Keith thought they looked ridiculous but Shiro insisted on having them. Keith suspected it was because heart-shaped diamantes sold well with the competition. He wondered if heart-shaped things were a prerequisite to expressing love, and why a red rose wasn’t enough.

 _Very classy, Mister Rakes,_ Keith thought as he roughly handled a dozen of the roses into a water bowl and secured them in place. Opening a draw, he dipped his fingers into a small pot containing the embellishments before squashing them into the centre of the petals with as much disdain as he could afford without damaging the flowers. Shiro shot him a displeased look, but deigned not to comment on Keith’s obvious hatred of the hearts. Keith ignored him anyway, the amount of effort he was putting into scowling at the loathed gems not to be wasted on petty sibling disagreements.

It was only when Keith was about halfway through the order list that Shiro straightened up from his own workstation, prosthetic hand rubbing at a tight muscle in his neck. Keith’s eyes flickered to the movement. He wasn’t sure how Shiro had come by such an advanced prosthesis, but he suspected it was something to do with the life insurance his parents had taken out, just as much as he suspected it had something to do with their death following hot on the heels of Shiro’s accident. A man had shown up at the hospital one day following the boys’ recuperation, wearing a crisp pressed suit and a crisp pressed smile. His words had sounded like he was reading them off a prompt sheet, all polished and handpicked. But nonetheless, what he’d promised was a state-of-the-art prototype for a new type of prosthetic appendage custom made for one Takashi Shirogane. Though Shiro had seemed sceptical at first, he’d agreed to receive it after the man with the manufactured smile had informed him that it would advance research they could use to help others. Keith had felt a pang of bitterness and a pang yearning at his brother’s consent: Bitterness for his situation, a problem he did not deserve to have. Yearning for his brother’s bravery and ability to overcome his own grief in the hope of helping others. It was every facet of their late parents down to a tee, and Keith felt a third pang of an emotion that he refused to name. However, how the prosthetic came to be attached to Shiro’s body was all purely speculation. Keith never asked and Shiro never told, and the prosthesis helped Shiro continue his work at their florist so it became a trauma-soaked advantage that they didn’t speak of.

“I’m going to get more fillers from the fridge,” Shiro announced.

He was referring to the huge walk-in room that ran about 40 degrees F colder than the main room. Keith wasn’t sure it technically counted as a fridge, but it kept the flowers cool and fresh much like a fridge kept food cool and fresh, so he didn’t argue. The only gripe he had was that it didn’t have a light bulb, a fact that had left him stumbling about in the dark, hands extended in optimistic search of a particular flower only to be met with the cruel reality of tripping over a bucket and falling face first onto a wet floor.

Keith nodded mutely in response to Shiro’s statement, and his brother his head through the bead curtain. Keith shot the tinkling beads a sour look before turning back to his work. He scratched at his cheek with dull nails, no doubt leaving a streak of green over his pale skin. Keith had tried to grow them once, only to quickly surrender to the inevitability of them breaking in his line of work. Whether it be from knocking them again the worktop or from how roughly he handled the palettes, Keith’s nails would get snapped or torn, and would often end up doing more harm than good, which is why he’d taken a pair of clippers to them one day and kept them militantly short. It didn’t stop a layer of gunk from piling up beneath them though, and Keith allowed himself one exasperated thought as to how he could clean them without poking at the squidgy pink flesh that sat to close to their peak.

With a heavy sigh, he pushed away from his worktop to make his way over to the sink. Turning on the tap, Keith grabbed the worn out nailbrush from the lip, it’s bristles bent and patchy from overuse. He dipped the tips of his fingers under the sputtering stream of water before raising the small brush to scrub gently at the compiled dirt and plant matter that lined the underside of his nails. For all his delicacy, Keith still hissed when he pressed a little too hard and caught the sensitive flesh underneath. Deeming them clean enough, he turned off the tap, watching as the flow of water slowed from a sputter to a cough and finally to a wheeze, the thin drip eventually ceasing as Keith towelled off his hands.

Traipsing over to the desk, Keith sat heavily down into the seat in front of the computer, flicking open the homepage to check for online orders. The light from the screen made his eyes ache in their sockets, and Keith rubbed tiredly at his face. He could feel the dryness of his skin under his palm, though perhaps his palm was dry and calloused and it was simply his face feeling it. He wasn’t sure, and he was too tired to care so he instead turned his attention back to the order list.

There wasn’t a huge amount of them – It was a slow day for everyone apparently. Keith was mentally going over their stock, checking what they needed to order in when he heard the bell hanging over the front door chime.

It should have alerted him immediately, that chime. Usually a high tinkle signalling the tentative first few steps of a customer, the bell let out something that was closer to a clang, the metal shrieking with the force exerted on opening the door.

“Hello, welcome to Lion Flow-“

Keith was interrupted by a loud SLAM. His bleary eyes snapped open to several dollar bills squashed quite decisively against the desk by a dark brown hand, fingers splayed across the wood grain. The force of the impact had sent whatever coins had been in the vendor’s hand to go spinning over the surface of the desk top, a few of them spilling over the sides to ping loudly over the floor. Keith eyes followed the brown column of the customer’s arm all the way up to their shoulder before finally settling on their face.

_“I need a bouquet of flowers that says FUCK YOU!”_

Keith felt his mouth drop open.

This was a new customer, a thought that registered vaguely in his mind. It registered vaguely because Keith was currently preoccupied with the appearance of the boy in front of him. He was tall, Keith believed, though it was hard to tell as he hunched forward towards the desk. The muscles in the arm that pressed the money to the wood were lean, wiry as a fence. His skin was a rich shade of brown, the kind that turned copper under sunlight, and a few shades lighter than the close-cropped hair that sat atop his head. His eyes crackled an electric blue, alive with a ferocity that jabbed Keith’s fight or flight reflex purely on instinct, and they hung above a pair of lips that were curled back into a snarl to display a row of even white teeth. Objectively good-looking but it was hard to make a fair judgement when murder shone in his eyes.

“Uh… What?”

 _“Flowers,”_ the boy hissed. “I need a bouquet that says _FUCK. YOU.”_

It was the kind of statement that required immediate clarification or justification, though the boy offered neither. He just stood, his breathing maybe a fraction too heavy to be idle, glaring at Keith with a fury that seemed almost rabid.

“Right,” Keith started when the boy added no further elaboration. His brain kicked into gear after a second, cataloguing the flowers they had in stock versus their meanings.

“What colours are you going for?”

“I don’t care,” the boy growled. “Something aggressive. Red.”

“Red is usually for love,” Keith rebuffed.

The boy just grunted; eyes tracking Keith like a predator as he stood to being making his way out onto the shop floor. Keith halted in front of one of the buckets; one filled with bright orange flowers the shade of fresh fire. The curl of the petals looked a little like flames, peeling backwards in an attempt to escape each other, as if they couldn’t stand to be in the others presence. Plucking a few flowers from it Keith tucked them into the crook of his arm.

“Orange lilies mean hatred,” he explained.

The boy didn’t respond. He just let his crackling blue eyes waltz lazily over the flowers before turning to look around the rest of the shop. Keith took his silence as licence, proceeding to collect what he needed to fulfil the strange request.

“Geraniums symbolise stupidity,” he stated, taking a handful and nestling them amongst the orange lilies in the cradle he’d made with his arm.

“What about these?” the boy suggested.

Keith turned to look at the flower the boy was holding. His tone lacked the venom from earlier, but he still sounded disgruntled. Which was just as well, since the flowers he was holding looked disgruntled too, their pink ruffled petals wilting down as the boy glared at them.

“Yes, but not in that colour,” Keith explained. “Yellow. It means ‘you have disappointed me.”

“You got that fucking right,” the boy snorted, holding the flowers out towards Keith.

The florist took them gently, careful not to let their fingers brush in the exchange. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to touch the boy. More, it was that Keith was viewing the customer like a skittish animal: Though the initial temper that he’d carried into the flower shop was seeping out of him with every inch that his shoulders drooped, Keith didn’t want to risk reigniting that fire. He wasn’t sure why anyone would want a bouquet of flowers to emit such a strong message of malcontent, but at least he could say that his day hadn’t been boring.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” he asked, setting the arrangement down on the worktop.

The boy narrowed his eyes at the assortment of flowers, scrutinizing it as his mouth curled into a scowl. It was an expression Keith was all too familiar with, though it didn’t look as if it belonged on the boys face. The pull on his skin was taut, stretched into an unfamiliar position. Even with the transformation, Keith could spy the whisper of wrinkles lining the boy’s mouth, the kind of lines carved by abundant laughter were you so lucky to have it. Keith didn’t feel he was very lucky.

“Does this bouquet say ‘fuck you’?” the boy asked, looking up at Keith expectantly.

“I guess?” Keith said with a shrug.

It was apparently the incorrect response.

“You _guess?”_ the boy squawked. “What kind of customer service is that? You _guess!_ ”

Keith was about to open his mouth to display an alternate way to say ‘fuck you’ when the boy interrupted him again.

“I need something that _really_ says ‘fuck you’. Like “ _fuck you_ , you giant mother-fucking rotten-ass donkey-loving _fuckin-_ “

“Irises,” Keith interrupted.

The boy’s parade of insults came to an abrupt stop, his eyes zeroing in on Keith.

“You could put an iris in there. They pretty much kill everything around them, so not only would you have a bouquet of flowers that says ‘fuck you’, but you’d have a _dead_ bouquet of flowers that says ‘fuck you’.”

Keith waited for the boy to say something. When he didn’t, the silence began to stretch into something that was not comfortable enough to be awed, but not uncomfortable enough to be awkward. Slowly, a Cheshire cat smile spread over the boy’s face. It was a smile made for war, and it made Keith shiver with a strange feeling of anticipation. It was the same kind of anticipation you felt whilst watching someone walk over a high wire or whilst standing at the edge of a very big drop. And it transformed the boy’s face, that smile. It split his skin like a fissure, a promise of danger.

“Perfect!” he cried, slapping his hands back down on the tabletop.

Keith retrieved a singular iris from one of the buckets before returning to the workstation. The boy watched him with no small amount of interest as he wove the flowers together in a neat arrangement, the colour dispersed in a calculated way that seemed to compliment each other at the same time as fighting for attention. When he was done, Keith rolled the flowers in cellophane a tied a strip of taffeta around them.

The boy took the bouquet out of Keith’s hands the second he was done, turning it over proudly as he stared at them. There was something a little mad about the glint in his eye.

“These are perfect!” he proclaimed after a minute of inspection. “This is the best _fuck you_ bouquet a man could ask for.”

Keith couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. He didn’t usually care for critique, but such a curious request provoked curiosity, and so the praise settled around Keith’s ears like muffs.

“How much do I owe you?” the boy asked.

Keith glanced down at the money that still sat, flattened and defeated on the desk. Even with the quick calculations in his head, Keith knew that it wasn’t enough to cover even half of what the bouquet was worth. But when he turned back to the boy, the customer had a look so triumphant painted on his face, that something about it made the florist square his shoulders. He put on his most genuine smile like he was putting on his best suit: Both only taken out for a special occasion.

“That should be fine,” Keith declared with a small nod at the cash.

The boy beamed, his face brightening with the action. The electricity that blazed in his eyes buzzed into a warm glow, and his back straightened bringing him up to his full height.

“Thanks! Now I gotta go tell someone to fuck off in flower.”

The boy turned on his heel and took two long strides towards the door. Two long strides that had a stroke of panic rising up in Keith like a wellspring, and he opened his mouth before he even thought of the words that may come out.

“Wait!”

The boy stopped in the middle of his third long stride, trimming it into a small step as he turned to face Keith, eyebrows raised in silent question.

“You…” The words that had swelled so threateningly in Keith’s throat evaporated, and he found himself opening and closing his mouth wordlessly like a goldfish as the boy stared at him.

“You… Forgot to take our business card!”

Keith swiped a small card out of the holder on the desk, stepping around the counter to hand it to the perplexed looking boy.

“In case you have any more flower enquiries.”

The boy took the card, his azure eyes hovering over the swirling text that decorated its surface.

Keith held his breath, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Thanks,” the boy said after a moment.

He fixed Keith with a lopsided grin before taking the rest of his long stride towards the door of the shop. The door swung open and closed with the sound of the bell, whose tinkling noise was significantly happier than when the boy had entered.

Keith watched through the large windows that framed the front of the shop as the boy walked across the street, the steady lope of his walk suggesting a quest rather than a gesture of goodwill to pair with the flowers he held in his hand.

“Did he pay for those?”

Keith jumped at the sound of Shiro’s voice close to his ear. He turned to see his brother watching the boy as well, arms crossed firmly over his chest. Keith hadn’t heard him come in from the back, and belatedly he shot daggers at the bead curtain: Silent when least needed.

“Yes,” Keith answered.

His face betrayed nothing, though Shiro was used to nothing and had somehow taught himself to read Keith’s mind.

“Did he pay _full price_ for them?”

Keith looked away, since there was no use in denying anything now.

“Take it out of my pay,” he grumbled.

Shiro didn’t say anything, though Keith caught the soft snort he made.

“Purple roses mean love at first sight,” Shiro said.

There was a hint of a smirk on his lips, and a lilt to the tone of his voice. It was the kind of lilt that said “I know what you’re not saying”, that kind designed to get Keith to say “fuck off, Shiro” in response.

So instead Keith said, “Black roses mean death.”

Shiro’s laughter was a bark, and he leant back in this chair with enough momentum to swing his feet up onto the desk. Keith shot him a pointed look, to which Shiro just shrugged.

“I’m the older brother.”

“Peonies mean shame,” Keith reminded him, chucking one of the aforementioned flowers at him.

Shiro caught it with his prosthetic hand, lifting it dramatically to his nose before blowing Keith a kiss.


	2. Update

Hey guys!

For everyone following this story, this is just a heads up in advance:

I'm turning this fic into a one shot - largely because I'm already running 2 other klance fics and don't really think I can do chapter instalments for a third one around the rest of my work (got three jobs like a real millenial ayy) so I'm just chipping away at this in a word doc and I'll update it all in one go when I'm finished.

Thank you to everyone who's already subscribed, and I hope you stick around for when the final piece is posted! :D

Lots of love! <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> Exit Lance stage left


End file.
